Ghost Town
by Evandar
Summary: Oneshot. Set pre-series. On a mission to Earth Country, Kakuzu stumbles across the ruins of Yuugakure.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Naruto_ and I am making no money from this story.

**AN:** This contains Hidan-related spoilers for the third info book, but nothing that would really spoil reading the manga. It's set pre-series and has a whole load of conjecture in it.

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Ghost Town

by Evandar

The inn was small and shabby. It was, however, the only real accommodation on the road to the pathetic little backwater – located, rather unfortunately, at the junction between the countries of Earth, Rain and Grass – known as Yuugakure. It had two claims to fame, outside of the fact that it was possibly the least-known of all shinobi villages: the hotsprings it was named for, and the fact that it was the only 'nation' left in the Shinobi continent that still had Jashinism as the official religion, which showed just how much of a pathetic little backwater the village actually was.

The reason why Kakuzu was heading in that direction was simple: he'd been hired to go into Earth Country to cause some general chaos, and he wanted a route that no one else would use. Earth Country did have some fairly busy trade routes, but this road was not one of them. Hence the shabbiness of the inn and the amazingly low prices – he suspected that they would have been higher had he not terrified the innkeeper into giving him the cheapest deal possible.

Despite this, Kakuzu was stunned to note that he was not the only traveller stopping at the inn that night. The other traveller wasn't a shinobi, of that Kakuzu was sure, though he was something of a curiosity.

He was a teenage boy. He was pretty to the point of it being obnoxious, albino – odd – and while Kakuzu was sure that he wasn't a ninja – he really, really didn't look the part – he wore a scratched out Yuugakure hitae-ate around his neck and carried a triple-bladed scythe on his back.

The reasons why Kakuzu was sure that the boy was not a ninja were simple: he could sense absolutely no chakra from the boy whatsoever, the idea of anyone from a pathetic little backwater like Yuugakure having the stones to go missing-nin was frankly ridiculous, and the boy's clothing was possibly the least practical outfit for a shinobi – missing-nin or not – to wear. Ever. It was an odd sort of robe that seemed to consist entirely of filmy sashes and scarves draped and knotted over the boy's upper body – covering him, but not leaving all that much to the imagination – and falling in unnecessary swathes of fabric to the boy's bare feet. It looked complicated, impractical, and more likely to get caught and tangled on everything from tree branches to the boy's long, coltish limbs than anything else.

Plus, the boy kept shooting him nervous glances, advertising to pretty much anyone who cared – and those who didn't; Kakuzu being a case in point – that he was shit scared Kakuzu might try and do anything to him.

A weakling. A pathetic little weakling from a village no one cared about dressing up as a missing-nin to make himself look cool, no doubt. Kakuzu would probably have been offended if he had bothered himself to care more.

Although…his senses were screaming that something was wrong about the boy. He smelled of smoke and sulphur – fairly understandable for someone who lived in a village surrounded by hot springs – but Kakuzu could smell blood as well. A lot of it, though he couldn't actually see any on the boy.

Maybe the weapon – cumbersome and flashy though it was – was for more than just decoration.

Probably not.

Besides, the idiots that ran the inn – the cowardly innkeeper Kakuzu had terrorised earlier and his squat wife; a woman who'd probably been produced by a long line of incestuous practises, and who'd clearly had a few too many brats of her own – treated the boy with respect. More respect than Kakuzu had frightened them into giving him. The little twerp had got his room and board for free. Had they not noticed the scratched through hitae-ate? Or did they think that such a symbol was meaningless? A mere fashion among shinobi?

Or were they more interested in the other symbol that hung around the boy's scrawny neck? Kakuzu had seen the rosary – not that it was hidden; the shining pendant was smack bang in the middle of the boy's chest like some sort of 'stab here' sign – when the boy had entered. He was pretty sure that not even the innkeeper was thick enough to have missed it.

Maybe the rosary and the robes had some sort of Jashinist meaning that Kakuzu didn't know about. It was probable. He didn't care enough about religion to bother learning anything beyond what the predominant one in each area was. What little he knew about Jashinism barely stretched beyond Yuugakure, backwater, and what the symbol looked like. At least, what he thought the symbol looked like…

He didn't speak to the boy, though he did notice that the boy went in the opposite direction the next morning. His long, red and black robe-sash-things billowed out behind him, swirling in the light breeze and not catching – apparently miracles did happen – on the blades of the boy's pretentious scythe.

Kakuzu snorted, turned away and continued on his route. He was being paid quite a lot for this mission – Earth and Iwa had a lot of very powerful, very rich enemies – and he didn't want to delay getting his hands on the money.

The road was quiet; it led slightly uphill, but it was nowhere even in the region of 'steep'. The scenery was picturesque. Small copses of trees and bushes dotted the grassy horizon. Small outcroppings of red granite jutted up through the meadows, creating shelter for some of the more delicate wildflowers. In the distance, Kakuzu could see storm clouds roiling over Rain Country – as usual – but the sky overhead was a clear, uninterrupted blue.

It was so saccharine that it made his teeth ache.

He caught scent of sulphur and knew that he was approaching the village. Further down the road, he could see the steam rising from the hot springs. It created a mirage of sorts; the heat distorting the horizon, making the trees waver and blur, and making the red granite seem darker than usual. Dark as blood.

Wait…

Coming to the crest in the road, Kakuzu stared down at the ruins of Yuugakure. Buildings were little more than burnt-out shells, and a quick glance into a nearby spring revealed bloody foam still floating on the water. Whatever had happened had happened recently.

He followed the road down. Now that he was at the village, he could smell smoke and blood under the overpowering stench of sulphur from the springs, and he was reminded of the boy from the inn. Surely he hadn't done this; that scrap of a boy, barely strong enough to lift his own scythe…

_(The falls of Takigakure had run red for days. Kakuzu had been alone: an underfed twelve-year-old racing through woods to get as far away from home as possible.)_

The village was a ghost town. He could see spatters of blood, weapons – kunai, shuriken, the odd ninjato – sticking out of the ground and the remains of the buildings. They were charred and bloodstained under the soot. There were no bodies.

The boy hadn't had a scratch on him.

_(He'd been cut. He'd been cut so many times he couldn't remember the number. But out of the gashes had come the black threads, not blood, and he'd used them to strangle his family, his team mates, his neighbours and to stitch himself back together again.)_

There were patterns drawn into the blood, he noticed. It was hard to tell at first. The blood was everywhere, and it had sunk into the ground, leaving blackened marks on the earth. Triangles in circles; perfectly drawn, as if the person doing it had had years of practise.

The same symbol that had been on the boy's rosary. The same symbol that decorated the church that loomed up above him.

He'd found the bodies.

In front of the church – a red granite monstrosity that had somehow made it out of the massacre unscathed – were the one-time villagers of Yuugakure. Their bodies, little more than blackened skeletons, were arranged on pikes.

_(Bodies littered the streets. They filled the river, staining the water red. At the bottom of the falls, the plunge pool threw up pinkish sprays of bloody foam. Kakuzu knelt, shaking, on the blood-soaked earth, among the bodies of his classmates, and watched as the black threads pulled the gashes in his arms closed. He was the only one who hadn't bled.)_

They were an offering. A sacrifice to a god barely anyone had heard of. Kakuzu stared up at the bodies – men, women, children; an entire village impaled – and the macabre image that they made. Black remains on a background of carved red granite.

Black on red.

The boy.

_(They'd thought he was a freak.)_ The boy had done this after all. _(They'd thought he was weak.)_ That scrap of a boy in the stupid clothes and a slashed-through hitae-ate. _(He'd cut through the symbol of the waterfall and been amazed his heart hadn't broken.)_ That boy who'd taken the path away from this village without looking back. _(He'd never looked back.)_

There had been red foam on the water.

_(The falls of Takigakure had run red for days.)_

The boy hadn't had a scratch on him.

_(He was the only one who hadn't bled.)_

It was a ghost town.

Under his mask, Kakuzu smiled. He should have asked the boy his name; maybe they would run into each other again someday.

If the boy survived that long.


End file.
